Rebecca Lelli
Mr. Fogleman
American Education
1 December 2014
PKB Reflection
During my Introduction to American Education course I used several personal knowledge based websites that were knew to me. These included Zotero, Evernote, Evernote Web Clipper, and a few others. They were used to help organize and store information for use at another time, so the ideas and web pages would not be lost. The topics that these websites held onto was used in class discussions and as research for several different projects. These websites were used to make technology do more for the students in terms of organization and consolidation.
My most challenging class this semester would probably have to be Nutrition. In addition to a lecture twice a week, we had a lab once a week that lasted over an hour and a half. For these labs we were expected to compile what we ate for three days and then log it into the computer on a specific website to get the nutritional information. I guess the most challenging part of this class was that the lab work was so tedious and took so long to complete. At one point I left out a few pages of questions I had to answer because I had no idea that they even existed on Sakai. Maybe its just me, but I would pick physical carbon copies of worksheets over online worksheets any day. To be successful, I tried to divide up the work so that I only needed to either study or complete problems a little at a time; which also prevented me from going crazy.
Viewing my notes as a lasting resource could help me be successful in future college classes because many things I will learn in one course will apply to other courses. For example, I have found that things I learn in Psychology show up in almost every single other course I have been taking. In History it shows why people made world-changing decisions, in Nutrition it shows why people are so unhealthy when they have the opportunity to be, and in this class it explains why certain people support certain policies of running education. Even in a class like Chorus I have found Psychology applies. For example, one of the songs is a slave song, and we must put ourselves in that person's shoes in order to properly perform the piece. Another song we sing was written centuries ago, and is very sexist but we need to look through the glasses of that time period. All this sort of downgrading of women was commonplace, and nothing would be thought of it if we were living back then. To summarize, any knowledge from any subject I am learning know could be applied to help me better understand other disciplines.
I have not really used Evernote this semester because I never really understood how it worked to begin with. Every time I would clip a web page, it would never save the site properly, and I would have to look it up again manually anyway. But that is okay, because technology that I do not understand does not really appeal to my conservation of knowledge anyway. As I said before, I much prefer a physical copy of information, so keeping notebooks (real ones) filled with the notes I may need later makes me much happier. Just like all people learn differently, all people recall information differently.
Someone once told me that studies have been done proving that taking notes by hand increases the ability for the brain to remember the information it is taking down, while doing it by typing decreases memory of the content. While its good news for me, I worry about others who get so stuck in technology that they cannot remember how to do things any other way. It is almost as if just operating without a screen has become an art, and this art is being lost. Perhaps one day, the world will have to function without the aid of technology. If that time should come, I would be happy to let someone copy my notes. ;)
Mr. Fogleman
American Education
1 December 2014
PKB Reflection
During my Introduction to American Education course I used several personal knowledge based websites that were knew to me. These included Zotero, Evernote, Evernote Web Clipper, and a few others. They were used to help organize and store information for use at another time, so the ideas and web pages would not be lost. The topics that these websites held onto was used in class discussions and as research for several different projects. These websites were used to make technology do more for the students in terms of organization and consolidation.
My most challenging class this semester would probably have to be Nutrition. In addition to a lecture twice a week, we had a lab once a week that lasted over an hour and a half. For these labs we were expected to compile what we ate for three days and then log it into the computer on a specific website to get the nutritional information. I guess the most challenging part of this class was that the lab work was so tedious and took so long to complete. At one point I left out a few pages of questions I had to answer because I had no idea that they even existed on Sakai. Maybe its just me, but I would pick physical carbon copies of worksheets over online worksheets any day. To be successful, I tried to divide up the work so that I only needed to either study or complete problems a little at a time; which also prevented me from going crazy.
Viewing my notes as a lasting resource could help me be successful in future college classes because many things I will learn in one course will apply to other courses. For example, I have found that things I learn in Psychology show up in almost every single other course I have been taking. In History it shows why people made world-changing decisions, in Nutrition it shows why people are so unhealthy when they have the opportunity to be, and in this class it explains why certain people support certain policies of running education. Even in a class like Chorus I have found Psychology applies. For example, one of the songs is a slave song, and we must put ourselves in that person's shoes in order to properly perform the piece. Another song we sing was written centuries ago, and is very sexist but we need to look through the glasses of that time period. All this sort of downgrading of women was commonplace, and nothing would be thought of it if we were living back then. To summarize, any knowledge from any subject I am learning know could be applied to help me better understand other disciplines.
I have not really used Evernote this semester because I never really understood how it worked to begin with. Every time I would clip a web page, it would never save the site properly, and I would have to look it up again manually anyway. But that is okay, because technology that I do not understand does not really appeal to my conservation of knowledge anyway. As I said before, I much prefer a physical copy of information, so keeping notebooks (real ones) filled with the notes I may need later makes me much happier. Just like all people learn differently, all people recall information differently.
Someone once told me that studies have been done proving that taking notes by hand increases the ability for the brain to remember the information it is taking down, while doing it by typing decreases memory of the content. While its good news for me, I worry about others who get so stuck in technology that they cannot remember how to do things any other way. It is almost as if just operating without a screen has become an art, and this art is being lost. Perhaps one day, the world will have to function without the aid of technology. If that time should come, I would be happy to let someone copy my notes. ;)